THE H.B. TRIBUNE TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1928 ABOLISHING THE SUBMARINE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 47, 7 February 1928, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1928 ABOLISHING THE SUBMARINE

"VESTERDAY we had a message from Washington which said that the American Secretary of State, Mr. Frank B. Kellogg, had publicly announced that the Government of the United States was “willing to sign a treaty with all the Rowers prohibiting the use of submarines entirely.” To-day we have a Paris message stating that the French Press characterises this announcement as “hypocritical and egotistical” and points to the United States as having joined with France and Italy in rejecting this same proposal when advanced by the British delegates at the Washington Disarmament Conference six years ago. There is doubtless a good deal of truth in this statement from past history, but it does not by any mean tell the whole story, which we take from American contemporary reports of the proceedings. It may be remembered that it was Lord Lee of Fareham and Mr. Arthur (now Lord Balfour) who at this Conference led the British attack upon the submarine as an inhuman agency of warfare. There was plenty of evidence fresh in the minds of all the delegates to support this plea, but it was France who, in particular, refused to give any ear to if. France had agreed to the proposed ratio, ultimately adopted, with regard to capital ships upon the express understanding that she was to be allowed a large ileet of auxiliary ships, including some 90,000 tons of submarines. French insistence on the maintenance of this position brought the French and British delegates into sharp conflict, Mr. Balfour sustaining Lord Lee’s view that the submarine was essentially an inhuman weapon of offence, while Admiral de Bon contended that it had also fully demonstrated its usefulness as a weapon of defence. It is not often that Lord Balfour has allowed himself to exhibit any great emotion, let alone heat, in international arguments, but on this occasion he made a quite im-

passioned appeal to the humanitarian sentiments of the Conference. The American narrator of the incident says that, “though all the delegations officially maintained their view that the submarine should be retained, the result of the three days’ debate was felt to have been a moral victory for Great Britain, Mr. Balfqur’s presentation of the case making a deep impression on all, especially on the American delegation. Despite this, however, the American delegation offered no affirmative support to the British proposal, merely contenting itself with a suggestion that France might see her way to join in the acceptance of a reduced quota of submarines. To this France opposed a fiat refusal, which precipitated another clash between the British and French delegations, Mr. Balfour and M. Sarraut engaging in an “academic” discussion as to the possible uses to which French submarines might be put in the “entirely hypochetical’’ case of a future war between Britain and France. This, however, did not result in any change in the French attitude, which necessitated Mr, Balfour, on his part, making it clear that under these circumstances Britain could agree to no limitation for craft adapted to fight the submarine. It was, he said, notoriously obvious that Great Britain was the Power which of all was the most vulnerable to submarine attack and that she must safeguard herself in all possible ways against it. Nor does the story end here, for there stands to the credit of a really, great American statesman, of a type all too rare, the eventual acceptance of proposals that, as among the Powers represented, stripped the submarine of a good deal of its savage terror. It was the veteran American politician Mr. Elihu Root who then brought forward a series of resolutions condemning the illegal use of the submarine as a weapon of warfare. These resolutions were not allowed to prevail without a good deal of opposition from both France and Italy, who while stressing their stand on the submarine as a defensive weapon only seemed still reluctant to subscribe to a definition of the uses to which it was not to be put. Eventually, however, after many days of discussion Mr. Root succeeded in getting his resolutions adopted, with only some minor modifications, and they were finally embodied in a treaty to which the delegates of the five nations represented at the ConferenceGreat Britain, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan—attached their signatures. The effect of this treaty was practically to prohibit the use of submarines as “commerce destroyers” in the way they had been used in the Great War. The rule was affirmed as applying to underwater as well as surface craft that no attack should be made on neutral or non-combatant shipping until it had been ordered to submit to “visit and search” and had refused so to submit. Furthermore, under the treaty, no merchant vessel is to be destroyed unless crew and passengers have been first placed in safety. It was further declared that any person in the service of any Power who should violate any of these rules should be deemed to have violated the laws of war and be liable to trial and punishment as for an act of piracy. Finally and broadly the signatories recognised the practical impossibility of using submarines as commerce destroyers without violating the requirements universally accepted by civilised nations for the protection of the lives of neutrals and non-com-batants, and accepted their prohibition in this respect as binding between themselves. At the same time all other nations were invited to make a like declaration. This treaty was in due course formally ratified by all the Powers directly concerned excepting France, who had not done so up to February, 1926, nor so far as we can discover, at any later date. That, however, is a reproach that lies entirely at her own door.